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Lung Cancer: Shame, Blame and Guilt

Stigma around lung cancer and its association with smoking hurts sufferers and limits research dollars

Eight years after beating lung cancer,&nbsp; Roz Brodsky still encounters comments that imply she is responsible for her cancer. &ldquo;To this day, if someone hears I had lung cancer, the first question always is, &lsquo;Did you smoke?&rsquo; That in and of itself is stigma. You&rsquo;re stigmatizing the person.&rdquo; (Stephanie Lake for The Toronto Star)

Thu., Nov. 1, 2012

By: Jaclyn Tersigni

When Roz Brodsky was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004 at the age of 45, she had recently quit smoking.

“I quit about a month before I was diagnosed. So, to me it was kind of like a big, cruel trick,” she says.

“You hear lung cancer and you don’t hear happy ending. Right away, you figure, ‘That’s it.’ You have an expiration date stamped on you and it’s a very hopeless feeling.”

On top of an often dismal prognosis – most cases are diagnosed in late stages and women have a five-year survival rate of 18 per cent – and a tough road to recovery, lung cancer patients often have to deal with stigma and guilt.

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In 2010, research commissioned by the Global Lung Cancer Coalition found that between 10 and 29 per cent of people surveyed in 16 countries admitted to feeling less sympathetic to lung cancer sufferers because of its association with smoking and tobacco use.

“Cancers that are . . . seen to be partly preventable or caused by behaviours of people are often associated with greater sense of stigma or self-blame and shame around the cancer,” says Dr. Gary Rodin, head of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care at Princess Margaret Hospital.

“It does affect the way people feel about it and their quality of life. Lung cancer also occurs in non-smokers, but there is still a sense of shame.”

Jan MacVinnie, manager of the Canadian Cancer Society’s Cancer Information Service, agrees. “There’s always an assumption that [smoking is] a reason,” MacVinnie says. “There are people who get lung cancer who are not smokers . . . and if people hear they have lung cancer, they assume they were a smoker when they might not have been. I think there’s a bit of indignation around that.”

Eight years after beating her cancer, Brodsky still encounters comments that imply she is responsible for her cancer.

“To this day, if someone hears I had lung cancer, the first question always is, ‘Did you smoke?’ ” the 54-year-old says. “That in and of itself is stigma. You’re stigmatizing the person.”

“If you hear someone had a heart attack, you don’t say, ‘How many Big Macs did you eat?’ ”

Questions like that provide an opportunity for Brodsky, who now works with Lung Cancer Canada – the only lung cancer advocacy group in Canada – to shed a light on whom else lung cancer affects.

Lung cancer kills more people than any other type of cancer. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that by the end of 2012, 25,600 Canadians will be diagnosed with lung cancer and 20,100 will die of it. Women are one and a half times more likely to develop lung cancer than men. And it’s not just current and former smokers who are diagnosed. Lung Cancer Canada estimates that 15 per cent of those diagnosed have never smoked.

The stigma around lung cancer has effects that go beyond each individual patient. Because of the association with tobacco, lung cancer does not attract as much research funding as other cancers. According to research published in 2011 by Charity Intelligence Canada, lung cancer receives only 7 per cent of cancer-specific research funding and less than 1 per cent of cancer donations. For the 2012-2013 fiscal year, the Canadian Cancer Society will invest $5.2 million in 38 projects related to lung cancer.

Brodsky is now a lung cancer survivor but says her experience has transformed her.

“It does give you a different perspective, that’s for sure . . . I really could have lived without it and so could’ve my family. But it certainly has been an education for me about a lot of things,” she says.

“It’s made me very interested in getting involved and trying to get the facts out there. Because this lack of public education about lung cancer is killing thousands and thousands and thousands of people every year.”

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